In recent years, the popularity and prevalence of cloud-based storage systems has increased dramatically. Cloud-based storage offers virtually unlimited storage and worldwide access to data via the Internet to users, applications, and services.
Unfortunately, an end user's experience with cloud-based storage may be negatively impacted by a variety of factors, including: 1) network problems (such as a network outages and bandwidth and latency issues), 2) data-center outages, 3) poor reliability of provider hardware, 4) storage provider bankruptcy, and the like. As such, the instant disclosure identifies a need for improving the performance and reliability of cloud-based storage systems and for using the same in combination with traditional enterprise-based storage systems.